e centre of a sympathetic group. "For fifteen
year I've been at ut," she was lamenting as I entered, "and grudging the
babes the very milk--more shame to me!--to pay their dhirty assessments.
And now, my dears, I should be a lady, and driving in my coach, if all
had their rights; and a sorrow on that man Dodd! As soon as I set eyes
on him, I seen the divil was in the house."

It was upon these words that I made my entrance, which was therefore
dramatic enough, though nothing to what followed. For when it appeared
that I was come to restore the lost fortune, and when Mrs. Speedy (after
copiously weeping on my bosom) had refused the restitution, and when Mr.
Speedy (summoned to that end from a camp of the Grand Army of the
Republic) had added his refusal, and when I had insisted, and they had
insisted, and the neighbours had applauded and supported each of us in
turn; and when at last it was agreed we were to hold the stock together,
and share the proceeds in three parts--one for me, one for Mr. Speedy,
and one for his spouse--I will leave you to conceive the enthusiasm that
reigned in that small, bare apartment, with the sewing-machine in the
one corner, and the babes asleep in the other, and pictures of Garfield
and the Battle of Gettysburg on the yellow walls. Port-wine was had in
by a sympathiser, and we drank it mingled with tears.

"And I dhrink to your health, my dear," sobbed Mrs. Speedy, especially
affected by my gallantry in the matter of the third share; "and I'm sure
we all dhrink to his health--Mr. Dodd of the picnics, no gentleman
better known than him; and it's my prayer, dear, the good God may be
long spared to see ye in health and happiness!"

In the end I was the chief gainer; for I sold my third while it was
worth five thousand dollars, but the Speedys more adventurously held on
until the syndicate reversed the process, when they were happy to escape
with perhaps a quarter of that sum. It was just as well; for the bulk of
the money was (in Pinkerton's phrase) reinvested; and when next I saw
Mrs. Speedy, she was still gorgeously dressed from the proceeds of the
late success, but was already moist with tears over the new catastrophe.
"We're froze out, me darlin'! All the money we had, dear, and the
sewing-machine, and Jim's uniform, was in the Golden West; and the
vipers has put on a new assessment."

By the end of the year, therefore, this is how I stood. I had made

By Catamount Silver Mine